GeekDad puts Air New Zealand's Skycouch to the test with the help of the kids

Travelling long haul with a young family can be an expensive and
tiring exercise. Despite all this I've had a long-term
ambition to visit relatives in New Zealand, but planned to wait
until the children were older and could cope with the two ten-hour
flights. However, last year I came across the Air New Zealand
Skycouch technology, on its Boeing 777-300ER fleet,
for a GeekDad story.

Fast forward through a lot of planning and preparation, and with
Air New Zealand's assistance, we were all booked on our family
flight to the other side of the world on our very own Skycouch
seats. It was time to find out if it was actually worth the
money.

The idea of an economy seat that converted to a bed platform at
first seemed both gimmicky and too good to be true. The proof of
the pudding was very much in the eating though as getting on board
and seeing them resting more easily during the two ten-hour flights
turned the gimmick into a much appreciated reality for us.

The technology and design behind the Skycouch is relatively
simple. Why not use the space in front of the seat and convert it
into useable sleep space with a flip up leg rest? Other airline
seats have offered a variety of leg rests (although not usually in
economy) but this was the first one I'd seen that makes use of
multiple seats next to each other.

Pessengers can then upgrade from one or two seats to have the
whole row and take advantage of that joined-up space that gets
somewhere close to that of a sofa. The fewer seats you upgrade from
the more it costs -- not surprisingly as you are effectively
getting more seats for your money.

The challenge for Air New Zealand was ensuring that passengers
were still safely strapped in while in the air and getting the
seats signed off by the CAA for safety. Air New Zealand put
together a new set of belts that accommodate a variety of different
sleeping positions.

I've read that some people found this a bit of an inconvenience
and that it detracted from their rest. Maybe it's because having
kids in the mix means you are going to be disturbed from time to
time anyway, but for us the belts weren't a big problem. In fact
the children turned into miniature police officers, ensuring we had
clipped the right hook to the right carabiners and were using the
correct strap for our current sleeping configuration.

"We found that one adult and one child could happily
sleep in one Skycouch row while the other two children shared a
couple of Skycouch seats"

With five of us travelling we had six Skycouch seats, in two
sets of three. For more money you can improve the ratio of people
to seats, and make the chances of sleeping for longer more
likely.

We found that one adult and one child could happily sleep in one
Skycouch row while the other two children shared a couple of
Skycouch seats with the foot rest up and the remaining adult sat
upright. Each Skycouch trio of seats comes with a mattress topper
and pillows, as you can see in the photos, that make the space feel
a little bit more like a bed and less like a seat.

Even in the more cramped row this worked pretty well for the
kids. With the footrests up they could slouch across each other,
play their games, watch films and
actually slept pretty well. We then took turns every four hours to
switch which adult got to lie down.

For all the novelty I think it is important to go into this with
the right expectations. For all the window dressing it is closer to
sleeping on a couch then bed. If you book it expecting a bed you
will be disappointed. For starters it's not long enough for most
adults to stretch out, and we were asked to sleep with our feet to
the isle to ensure we didn't get bumped. Also, when the person in
front inevitably recline their seats the space available to sleep
in is diminished.

Perhaps the deciding factor for anyone considering the seat
comes down to price and who you are travelling with. You need
consider how they stack up in terms of space, comfort and service,
against other seats on the aircraft. This is potentially the new
seat's Achillies heel, not because it prices itself out the market
but because by its nature it is complex to cost. Prices depend not
only where you are travelling to but also how many people intend to
use the Skycouch seats.

With a bit of homework though it currently breaks down as
follows for a return flight from Heathrow to Los Angeles (as
described on Air
New Zealand's website).

As you can see, for a single traveller you need to really value
being able to lie totally horizontal, and be happy to forgo the
service extras in Premium Economy. If you are travelling with
someone else, a partner or child you are happy to cuddle while you
sleep, the Skycouch starts looking like better value than Premium
Economy.

It's worth noting that while a Skycouch
upgrade for three people travelling together doesn't make a
huge difference, if two of them are young children this can still
add a little bit more comfort to the journey even if you can't all
sleep horizontally.

Overall I came away impressed with Skycouch. Some clever design and lateral thinking about seatbelts
have created a different long haul experience for Economy
passengers. For families there is a lot of value here, particularly
when the kids are smaller (if Mum and Dad are smaller that will
help too).

With talk of Air New Zealand licensing the seat to other
airlines I expect that more families will be taking advantage of
this -- and with good reason, I think. For the most part
anyway.

Andy Robertson is Wired.co.uk's resident GeekDad and appears
as a family gaming expert for the BBC.

Poll

Would this sort of extra space make you more likely to travel with children?